This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019-2021. Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data, make sure the numbers we see make sense, and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.

Date range: 2019-01-01 to 2021-11-30

Report Structure

  1. KPIs: data points that indicate how good the shelter is doing on on L&F. They have numeric goals associated with them.
  2. Supporting data: data points that aren’t a goal themselves but serve as a proxy for improving a goal. For example, the method of RTH is not a performance indicator, but it helps identifying how RTHs take place. The number of strays found per ZIP code is not a metric to improve, but it shows where most strays are coming from to guide resource allocation.
  3. Data notes: the state of the data received from the shelter.
  4. Extra metrics: some ideas for additional L&F metrics and the data points they require.

Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.

KPIs

Yearly RTH Rates by Species

This section provides an overview of the RTH rate per year divided by species.

Overall RTH Rate

This table covers all strays and RTHs. RTH rates shown below are the number of strays with RTO outcome out of all strays.

When we go over this, let’s make sure we calculate the rate the same way you do, so we would want to make sure what we see makes sense. If these numbers are right, they are higher than the national and higher than HASS averages, which are at 30% RTH rate for dogs and 2% for cats, and have been stable since 2019.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 2247 93 0.04
Cat 2020 1977 82 0.04
Cat 2021 2102 80 0.04
Dog 2019 1334 499 0.37
Dog 2020 880 332 0.38
Dog 2021 948 360 0.38
Other 2019 118 2 0.02
Other 2020 79 1 0.01
Other 2021 220 5 0.02

Field RTH Rate

This one only counts animals who came in as strays from the field. Normally, we would then split these by RTH method between RTO in the field and in the shelter, but since there is not a way to tell whether field returns happen from the data, this is left out.

The rates for dogs higher than the overall ones (except for 2019), suggesting the RTH of over-the-counter dogs would be slightly lower lower (next tab).

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 1063 47 0.04
Cat 2020 1113 48 0.04
Cat 2021 1019 37 0.04
Dog 2019 795 290 0.36
Dog 2020 540 220 0.41
Dog 2021 522 215 0.41
Other 2019 80 1 0.01
Other 2021 121 5 0.04

Shelter RTH Rate

This shows the numbers only for strays that were public drop offs. Indeed, the rates are slightly lower than field intakes for dogs (41% vs. 34% in 2021), and similar for cats.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 1184 46 0.04
Cat 2020 864 34 0.04
Cat 2021 1083 43 0.04
Dog 2019 539 209 0.39
Dog 2020 340 112 0.33
Dog 2021 426 145 0.34
Other 2019 38 1 0.03
Other 2020 44 1 0.02

RTH Over Time

These three time series show the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory. These figures show only dogs information because there were only 8 RTH cats in 2021.

It seems like the rate has been pretty stable over all with a few spikes of particularly successful months. However, the next two tabs show the pattern is different for field and OTC intakes.

Overall RTH

Field RTH

This is the same figure, but only counting field strays (again, anything marked as ACO pick up). Here, even though there are some spikes and lows, there is a steady improvement over time.

Shelter RTH

This figure only counts strays who were public drop offs. Here there seems to be even a moderate decrease and then stability, definitely not the same improvement as returns for field intakes.

Stray Intakes

This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake.

Stray Intakes by Month

Dog numbers are pretty steady, suggesting that the differences in RTH rates between months are not a result of differences in intake volume.

Stray Intake Subtypes

Looks like more animals come in from ACO.

Length of Stay Differences - RTH v. Other Outcomes

The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays is shown in the table below – roughly 19 days for dogs and 25 for cats when looking at the average.

That means that every successful RTH saves 19 days of care on average at Humane Rescue Alliance, and field RTH would save an extra day or two on average for RTH from the shelter.

This could translate to pretty significant cost savings at scale – assuming a daily cost of care of 30$, if 100 more dogs were returned home in 2021, it would have saved Humane Rescue Alliance about $57,000 in costs of care. This is a fairly simple calculation, but it gets at the magnitude of the potential benefits.

Species Outcome Count Average_Length_Of_Stay
Cat Other Outcomes 4689 28.27
Cat RTO 255 2.89
Dog Other Outcomes 1948 21.70
Dog RTO 1191 2.62

Supporting Data

Stray Intake and RTH By Found Location - Dogs

The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by Census tracts to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per census tract.

The data in this section includes stray animals for which found addresses were present. Also, animals found outside the District of Columbia were excluded since it simplified the mapping process (~130 animals).

There were 9200 animals with intake type of strays after removing TNR animals. About 300 animals had unusable found locations - primarily the shelter addresses (in Oglethorpe and New York Ave), versions of “HRA”, “unknown”, “n/a”, and “7/11”. About 600 additional addresses that included landmarks rather than precise locations (e.g. an abbreviation of a park or lake) or street names only were excluded since they cannot be geocoded. This resulted in 8256 animals overall, of which 2758 were dogs.

After this filtering, the data below (number of strays, rate of RTH, RTH gap) is shown for 2758 dogs of which 1102 were RTH. The next section shows the same maps for the cats.

Stray Intake

The area around the airport stands out most clearly.

RTH Rate

Note that the area with the highest stray intake also has among the lowest RTH rate.

RTH Gap

This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists - it shows the number of strays NOT returned to home in each area. As the RTH rate is fairly low in the areas with the highest stray intakes, it looks pretty similar to the first map.

Top 10 Found Locations

Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations plotted above, to make sure they make sense to you.

Found.Location Count
2501 Calvert Street NW unit 712 NW Washington DC 21
226 Rittenhouse Street NE NE Washington DC 13
100 Q St SW SW Washington DC 11
1865 Tubman Rd SE 20020 SE Washington DC 11
4020 Minnesota Ave NE NE Washington DC 11
514 Ridge RD SE SE Washington DC 11
1400 Water St SE SE Washington DC 10
14th and Upshur NW NW Washington DC 10
2817 Gainesville SE SE Washington DC 9
5812 Georgia Ave NW NW Washington DC 9

Stray Intake and RTH By Found Location - Cats

This is similar to the maps above, but for 5141 stray cats of which 229 were RTH.

Stray Intake

The map looks somewhat similar from far out, but a few different areas stand out.

RTH Rate

Since RTH rate is pretty low across the city, it is also low throughout in this map.

RTH Gap

This is very similar to the stray map because of the low RTH occurrence for cats.

Top 10 Found Locations

Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations plotted above, to make sure they make sense to you.

Found.Location Count
2501 Calvert Street NW unit 712 NW Washington DC 21
226 Rittenhouse Street NE NE Washington DC 13
100 Q St SW SW Washington DC 11
1865 Tubman Rd SE 20020 SE Washington DC 11
4020 Minnesota Ave NE NE Washington DC 11
514 Ridge RD SE SE Washington DC 11
1400 Water St SE SE Washington DC 10
14th and Upshur NW NW Washington DC 10
2817 Gainesville SE SE Washington DC 9
5812 Georgia Ave NW NW Washington DC 9

Census Data

Map

This map shows different demographic information for the DC area. “Spanish” refers to the % of people who attested they speak Spanish but not English in that Census tract.

Strays x Income

One example of using both the census data and shelter data is below – there is a very clear negative correlation between stray intakes and median household income, such that there are fewer dogs coming in from areas with higher income.

Data Notes

  1. Found location - as mentioned above, we had to remove a few hundred animals because the found location was not precise enough (intersection, street name and number, or block), although relative to other shelters, most addresses were in pretty good shape.

Extra Metrics

Other things we could show if we had the data for it:

  1. Distance traveled by lost dogs- We could add this upon getting an Intake with Results Extended report, which would have the outcome addresses for animals (all other personal information there can be filtered out by us or before sending).
  2. Microchip analysis - with the same extended report we could look at the chip number and issue date and identify the RTH rates for animals with/out chips and the areas in which animals come in with/out chips.
  3. Reason for RTH failure when owner is found (if that is a common occurrence).
  4. Number of public found reports and successful RTH by the public (if you are using the lost and found report module in petpoint).

Thanks for reading through, and we’re looking forward to talking through it and thinking about more ways to make this data useful for you.